BEEP Doctors awarded The King’s Award for Voluntary Service

BEEP Doctors (BASICS Cumbria), a team of dedicated volunteer doctors which carries out life-saving work in Cumbria, has been awarded The King’s Award for Voluntary Service – the highest award a local voluntary group can receive in the UKi and is equivalent to an MBE.
“This is a massive honour and we are immensely proud to have been awarded The King’s Award for Voluntary Service,” said Dr Theo Weston MBE, the chair and founder of BEEP Doctors. “In my view it is by far and away the best thing to have happened to the BEEP Doctors charity in our near 30-year history.”

The King’s Award for Voluntary Service aims to recognise outstanding work by local volunteer groups to benefit their communities. It was created in 2002 to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee and, following his accession, His Majesty The King emphasised his desire to continue the Award.

Cumbria’s BEEP Doctors, who are all volunteers with the charity, provide enhanced pre-hospital emergency medical care. They work closely with the police and fire services, North West Ambulance Service, Great North Air Ambulance Service and North West Air Ambulance. At incidents, BEEP Doctors can carry out some surgical procedures, such as inserting chest drains; some can perform pre-hospital anaesthetics and all are able to administer drugs that most road crew paramedics cannot, such as ketamine/fentanyl to give pain relief and allow fracture manipulation. Many of the emergencies they attend are road traffic collisions, as well as incidents involving farms, pushbikes, horses and water.

Beep Doctors’s 11 doctors include A & E consultants at West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven and Cumberland infirmary in Carlisle; two anaesthetists who work at Royal Lancaster Infirmary; and three GPs.
So far in 2023 the BEEP Doctors (BASICS Cumbria) charity has attended 272 incidents and members have completed 872 volunteering hours.

More details in the document below.